Shorten leadership tainted by the past

Nicola Roxon’s speech on Wednesday night was an impressive performance. Just one thing puzzles me. She mentioned that the new Labor leadership couple of Bill Shorten and Tanya Plibersek are a “dream team".

Maybe, but what of the fact that Mr Shorten was apparently instrumental in restoring Rudd to the Labor leadership before the election? No doubt Ms Roxon would have preferred Julia Gillard to have remained leader.

In saying Bill Shorten makes up one member of a new dream team seems to me to smack of inconsistency at least. There was panic in the Labor Party, possibly even unnecessary and certainly poll-driven as Ms Roxon pointed out, and Bill Shorten’s response, apparently after great personal soul-searching, was to act to restore to the leadership a man widely regarded as not able to effectively lead.

If one were truly cynical and very imaginative, one might say it was part of a brilliant two-pronged manoeuvre to get rid of both Ms Gillard and Mr Rudd as leaders when the election was likely to be lost, so making way for at least one member of the new dream team.

But, of course, it wasn’t that. It was to reintroduce to the people, as next Labor prime minister of Australia, a man now vilified as a completely dysfunctional leader.

Neither Labor, nor especially Mr Shorten, will be able to shrug off this example of very poor and panicky decision-making with the additional odour of cynical expediency.